Word: coaling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...gross national product, is expected to drop by 3% in 1980, making Poland the first East bloc country to suffer two consecutive declines. Its hard-currency debt to the West has risen to $23 billion; servicing it requires about 80% of its export revenues. Exports are down, largely because coal production is running more than 5% behind projections. Poor weather and absurdly low government price ceilings-a major disincentive to farmers-have contributed to a 12% decline in agricultural output. "Queues existed before, but now we have no food at all," complained a worker at the Ursus tractor factory outside...
Another questionable aspect of the coal deal, according to the Government lawyers, was its timing. The IRS sharply curtailed this particular kind of tax shelter...
...clients that they would never have to pay another dime in taxes. In 1975 the two lawyers joined forces with Producers Meyer and Friedman, whose show-biz connections helped catch the stars as investors. A year later, the group leased 22,000 acres in Wyoming, ostensibly to develop coal deposits. The investors signed notes specifying that for every dollar they put up in cash, four additional dollars would be taken out of their anticipated coal-mining profits. That was the gimmick that gave the investors a five-for-one write-off. Those profits never materialized. One excellent reason: though Osserman...
...told, the Osserman group raked in $20 million in coal investments, only $300,000 of which went to pay for leasing the lands. The rest was dissipated through a network of corporations; part went for commissions to tax-shelter salesmen and payoffs to business associates, part into other deals, and part was used to purchase such assets as a business jet, a Ferrari and several Rolls-Royces. Investigators believe that a sizable chunk of the money may remain salted away in Swiss bank accounts. Further indictments might be handed down against some investors, who knew that the transactions were...
Whatever the outcome of its case, the Justice Department clearly intends these indictments to serve notice that it is cracking down on tax-shelter abuses. But the process is bound to be slow. The Government spent three years gathering evidence on the coal-mining case, which is scheduled to go to trial at the end of March...